NFU Mutual General Insurance chooses Questionmark Perception for online assessment system to help meet new FSA regulations

NFU Mutual General Insurance has selected Questionmark Perception as its software of choice for developing a new online assessment system that helps the company to meet FSA regulations that came into action on 14th January 2005. These new regulations demand that all firms in the UK that undertake financial services can prove the competence of their staff, thus ensuring that financial services companies deliver the best possible service and advice to their customers.

With thousands of staff to assess in over 300 office locations across the UK an automated online system was the answer, replacing the company’s existing manual, paper-based system of assessment. Questionmark Perception has enabled the company to streamline its processes and provide a more secure, efficient and effective assessment system that is easy to use for both staff and administrators, readily available to all parties, and that provides a clear audit trail for all assessments.

Philip Wilcox, Training and Development Consultant at NFU Mutual, comments, “Competence assessment is a sound way of proving that our staff have the knowledge required to deliver the best possible advice and products to our customers. However, our existing manual system had many drawbacks, especially as our company is so widely spread geographically. The new online system has been successfully piloted and the feedback we have gained from our users is very positive. The statistical analysis tools within Perception have enabled us to review the structure and wording of our questions to amend any that appear confusing or ambiguous. The online assessments are now up and running and they are proving to be an incredibly valuable resource for foundation knowledge assessment.”

NFU Mutual is already looking at several other ways to use the Questionmark Perception software. The Life Assurance division is in the process of developing its own foundation assessment system and other departments are considering the same route. Surveys and questionnaires will be introduced for all training courses and the company may implement more in-depth skills assessment at a later stage.

About Question markQuestion mark has been producing testing and assessment software since 1988. Question mark Perception allows people to create question files without programming experience or knowledge of HTML. Powerful reports help instructors track individual and class performance and provide diagnostic information that can be used to improve both instruction and assessments. Some 2,000 businesses, government agencies and educational institutions in more than 50 countries use Perception.

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